The Danish plant drink company Dryk has one mission: To make it simple for everybody to choose high-quality plant-based drinks without any compromises on nature or biodiversity. 

We need to produce and consume food far more sustainably than we do today. We must find solutions to the global challenges of public health and loss of biodiversity, while reducing global resource consumption for food production. With rapid growth rates of plant-based products, it is important to also be able to offer products with a proper nutritional value composition.

A nutritious plant-based drink

Dryk has a focus on nature, producing vegan drinks from oats and peas. The oats come from the Nordic region and yellow split peas from France. The future aim is to use local sourced materials to reduce their carbon footprint, which is why they do not use almonds or rice as raw materials. Dryk enriches the plant-based milk with B12, calcium, ribuflavin and vitamin D, so it is close to the nutritional value of cow’s milk. However, the plant drinks emit 70% less CO2 than milk, while using 87% less water and 11 times less land usage.

 

The Plant drinks emit 70% less CO2 than cow milk

All Dryk’s drinks, apart from the Organic Oat Barista, are enriched with 1 microgram Vitamin D, 0,38 microgram Vitamin B12, 0,21 microgram riboflavin and 120 microgram calcium. With large parts of the world population being lactose intolerant, and thus used to drinking plant-based products, Dryk’s brand stands strong internationally by also ensuring a proper nutritional value.

Working to Free Wild Nature

Dryk contributes to the Danish Nature Fund that works hard to increase biodiversity and protect wild nature in Denmark. For each DRYK sold, the company donates an amount that will be used to free a little area of wild area in Scandinavia. A measurement of the area can be found at the bottom of the packaging. With large parts of the world population being vegan or climate aware,  Dryk’s brand stands strong internationally by also ensuring a proper nutritional value and emphasis on nature friendliness.

Meeting the growing demand for dairy products is a significant challenge in Vietnam, where the agricultural sector continues to modernise. TH Group, a leading Vietnamese dairy producer managing around 20,000 dairy cows, identified a critical barrier to increased productivity: the presence of mycotoxins in animal feed.

Mycotoxins are naturally occurring toxins produced by certain moulds in feed raw materials, and they pose a serious threat to animal health and welfare. These toxins not only compromise the immune system of livestock but also reduce milk yields, making it more difficult for producers to meet rising consumer demand. As such, TH Group needed an effective solution to enhance feed safety and animal health while simultaneously boosting production efficiency.

Danish technology provides measures to optimise feed quality

To address this challenge, TH Group partnered with Danish technology provider SKIOLD, a company with more than 140 years of experience in delivering customised milling and feeding systems to agricultural producers worldwide. The goal was to build a complete, efficient feed mill system that could improve the quality of animal feed by reducing harmful contaminants, thereby optimising the health and productivity of TH Group’s dairy herd.

As a part of the feed mill, they installed an Omega universal cleaning machine from SKIOLD that is capable of handling up to 300 tons per hour when cleaning cereals – and up to 30 tons per hour when grading seeds. The Omega cleans grain and seeds with high efficiency, in part by evenly distributing the material across vibrating screens that follow a unique motion pattern to maximise cleaning performance.

The universal cleaning machine handles up to 300 tons per hour when cleaning cereals – and up to 30 tons per hour when grading seeds

Tailored feed technology drives efficiency and boosts milk yields

Shortly after the feed mill became operational, TH Group began to see measurable improvements. Feed costs were reduced, as cleaner inputs meant less reliance on costly additives. More significantly, milk yield across the herd increased by 10%, demonstrating a clear return on investment and validating the impact of better feed quality on overall production performance.

The new feed mill allowed TH Group to take full control over the feed production process, ensuring that only clean, safe, and nutritionally balanced feed reached their dairy cows. The collaboration was tailored to TH Group’s specific needs, ensuring that the technology was both scalable and aligned with local production goals.

By implementing automation solutions in the food and beverage sector, production facilities can become more resource-efficient thus minimising waste, energy consumption and climate footprint.

When food producers around the world establish new production facilities, there is a particular need to focus on optimal utilisation of scarce resources and high traceability. One solution is to implement an automation solution that can optimise the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) measurement and secure full traceability.

A high-scale optimisation project
The Danish process automation company, Au2mate, develops and delivers high-quality automation solutions in order to optimise processes and minimising waste, energy consumption and climate footprint in the food and beverage sector. Their solutions are designed with a focus on high usability, reliability and optimal utilisation of industry 4.0 technologies.

The solution has resulted in an increase in overall equipment effectiveness of 5%

When the Saudi Arabian company, Almarai – one of the largest integrated dairy food companies in the world – were to extend their production capacity with a new dairy production plant they reached out to Au2mate to deliver a fully automated control and IT solution with SAP integration, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) measurement and full traceability.

Significant improvement of resource effectiveness
The goal for the project was to reduce production line waste and downtime in the processing area and the filling and packaging area while improving performance, resource efficiency and quality. This required a contemporary and future-proof system to optimise production from a cost and resource-saving perspective.

Considering the massive production capacity of the plant, Au2mate’s solution has resulted in an impressive increase in overall equipment effectiveness of 5%.

The successful implementation of the automatic production plant with fully integrated resource planning system has created full transparency of the production site where project instalments included 25 operator stations, 21 barcode scanners, 8 rack servers, 13 PLCs and more.

In the unique agricultural environment around Lammefjorden in Denmark, a small Danish enterprise uses local surplus potatoes to create a vodka that is unique in taste and represents how the Danish food arena puts emphasis on the use of locally grown foods.

One of the key points for food producers around the world is to have a transparent food production that is environmental and sustainable at the same time. Three entrepreneurs use a mix of the local surplus potatoes and the vitamin-rich soil to create a high-end vodka called Nordic Soil, which has taken Danish production to new heights.

Unique production environment

Throughout the last centuries, the geographical fjord area has developed into land with soil that is rich in vitamins and taste which create products with unique taste. This has caused that for example potatoes from this specific area are one of Denmark’s luxury seasonal products.

The left-over potatoes used by Nordic Soil are unmarketable because nature has made them crooked or angular. Instead of discarding them, the potatoes now make a crucial contribution to the production of vodka. Not only does the use of local potatoes benefit the taste; the use of surplus resources also enhances a more circular economy that keeps waste low and thus contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 about reducing food loss and waste.

Not only does the use of local potatoes benefit the taste; the use of surplus resources also enhances a more circular economy

Bringing the local taste to the rest of the world

The high-end vodka from Nordic Soil is just the latest example of how companies of all sizes enhance a more circular production using local surplus food. We have previously described how Daka Denmark uses food productions’ by-products to produce feed or bio-diesel. With the Nordic Soil Vodka, the Danish food cluster takes it a step further on how Danish companies use local goods.

The Nordic Soil vodka is just another example of how the Danish food cluster collaborates and innovate by using local goods to e.g. minimise food loss and waste. Read more about the Danish culture of collaboration here.

Many valuable raw materials end up as side streams in food manufacturing plants. For manufacturers, these often unavoidable by-products require expensive handling and disposal. High volumes of untapped resources go to waste in this way.

Danish Agrain is on a mission to turn waste into value. Using a patented process, the young enterprise upcycles plant-based side streams into innovative powder ingredients that utilise all raw materials. They can even replace some of the conventional ingredients in food production – saving costs and creating a big circular win for business.

From side streams to ingredients

The process is designed to handle highly variable side streams, including spent grain from breweries and discards from juice, coffee and oat drink production. Food safety and the consistent taste, nutrition and quality of the upcycled ingredients are priorities to ensure their easy integration in existing food production lines.

Easy to use and lower impact

Upcycling is at its best when the solutions are plug-and-play. Agrain’s spent grain ingredients can, for example, partly replace regular flour in a wide range of baked foods, pasta, and snacks. For every kilo of regular flour replaced, average two square metres of land normally used for flour production are saved, as no new grains need to be grown. Water, CO₂ emissions, are fertiliser and pesticide use are also reduced in the same way.

For every kilo of regular flour replaced, average 2 m² of land normally used for flour production are saved

Recognising the challenges facing cocoa production, Agrain has also developed a 100% upcycled replacement for up to 50 percent of the cocoa powder in a wide range of applications. Selected spent grain and cocoa bean shells are the upcycled raw materials.

Agrain is currently the only upcycling company in Europe with Upcycled Certified^® status. A circular food system is the goal – in partnership with likeminded food industry players.

With the innovative field robot from Danish company FarmDroid, farmers and plant growers can reduce costs for sowing and cleaning crops in a CO2 neutral and organic way.

The organic area is growing year by year, and at the same time, there is an increasing focus on reducing pesticides within conventional agriculture. This intensifies the focus on, and need for, mechanical weed control in agriculture.

In organic farming, seeding and weeding are most often done by hard, monotonous physical work and costly manual weeding. Labour costs per hectare are thus high and a general shortage of manual labour in agriculture makes it difficult for farmers to produce economically viable crops.

Get rid of unwanted weeds, sustainably

The Danish company, FarmDroid, has developed a fully automatic seeding and weeding robot to ease the amount of manual labour involved in keeping crops free of unwanted weeds. The FarmDroid FD20 robot has been developed with a focus on automating mechanical weed control between the plant rows, but also in the row itself. In one season, one robot can sow and weed 20 hectares.

The robot prevents a waste up to approximately 20,000 beet sprouts per hectare where the human eye would only remove 20-30%

FarmDroid is powered by solar energy and by using high-precision GPS technology it is not dependent on cameras or sensors for plant and weed recognition, which increases operational stability. The solar cells consist of four batteries that are charged by four solar panels producing up to 1.6 kWh, corresponding to 20 kWh per day, which ensures that the robot does not need external charging.

Short payback period and reduced manual labour

With the FarmDroid FD20 robot, you get precise weeding ensuring the crops optimal growth conditions, without having to struggle unnecessarily with the weeds for nourishment and sunlight. Results from a German sugar beet farmer show that the robot can prevent a waste of up to about 20,000 beet sprouts per hectare compared to manually hoed beet fields, where the human eye will remove 20-30% of the beet sprouts, simply because it is difficult to distinguish between weeds and crops.

As the robot operate fully automatically and does not need to be monitored it furthermore helps eliminate or greatly reduce the need for manual weeding and thus have a repayment period all the way down to a year and a half.

One of Europe’s largest vertical farms is up and running in a 7,000 square-meter warehouse near Copenhagen, producing lettuce and herbs vertically and powered by wind.

In 2050, there will be nearly 10 billion people on Earth — about 3 billion more mouths to feed than there were in 2010. We will need 56% more food in 2050 to feed all, but at the same time, we need to prevent agricultural land from expanding as we currently use 50% of the world’s vegetated land for agriculture. Rethinking methods of producing food is thus a necessity.

In a carefully controlled environment, Nordic Harvest, a Danish company specialised in vertical farming, produces salads and herbs on 14 floors in one of Northern Europe’s biggest vertical farms. The method used works as a closed ecosystem and has several advantages. It is e.g. possible to harvest all year round, uses significantly less water and limits the use of pesticides or fertilisers.

A recirculated food system

The farm will produce 1,000 tonnes of salads and herbs a year, when fully developed, on an area equivalent to a large football pitch. The plants grow in a 100% circular environment where everything is recycled and cleaned. Once the water has passed the plants, it is cleaned and sent back into the plant. With 100% control of their water usage and nutrient uptake from the plants, nothing is wasted. This means that 90-95% less water is used compared to the usual amount in agriculture.

The sow and harvest happen 15 times a year and produces 1000 tons of green in 100 times less space

Electrifying Danish agriculture

Because the plants do not have to fight against nature in the form of wind and weather, do not have to use force to pull nutrients or water out of the ground or fight pests, they grow faster. In fact, they only spend 2-3 weeks growing from seed to finished plant. This means that Nordic Harvest can sow and harvest in a continuous process 15 times a year and produce 1,000 tons of green in 100 times less space than if grown in the field.

The facility runs on 100% certified wind energy and adapt – with custom-made LED diodes – both light spectrum and brightness, so that the optimal photosynthesis is created in each individual plant type.

Vertical farming shows how Denmark is now innovating within agriculture and technology fulfilling a great need in relation to rethink production methods and make crop production more sustainable.

Combustible dust is a fire and explosion hazard when food manufacturers spray-dry milk and other food products into a powder format. The primary source of the risk is the residues that form in the pressure nozzles when liquid dairy or food concentrates are atomised into small droplets before drying.

Danish technology supplier GEA Process Engineering has patented a nozzle purging system to eliminate the hazard and, at the same time, prevent unwanted microbiological growth and loss of yield.

Automated purging improves hygiene and reduces fire risk

The nozzles are routinely taken out for cleaning and replaced during operation, and it is this procedure that can lead to the formation of unwanted food residues. Using the GEA Clean Purge system, such residues can be expelled from the nozzle prior to the replacement operation. In this way, there are no deposits left that could compromise hygiene or initiate a self-combustion process.

In addition to improving safety in the production plant, the cleaning system provides significant operational savings by reducing cleaning frequency and improving equipment efficiency overall. Water, energy and chemical consumption are significantly lower with the system installed.

Higher yield and significant savings in cleaning and energy

GEA Clean Purge is the only fully patented solution that significantly reduces safety risks, representing an important step forward for food and dairy powder production. Besides addressing the primary cause of fire and explosions in food and dairy spray dryers, the Clean Purge system from GEA offers significant and valuable product and operational savings.

a typical plant that operates with a 24/7 concept and produces 5-7 tons of powder per hour, would be able to increase the annual yield by approximately 40-60 tons at daily operations.

The savings will be obtained by reduced cleaning frequency, reduced water, energy and chemical consumption, lower costs for wastewater disposal and higher overall equipment efficiency. Simply by eliminating feed remaining in the system before cleaning cycles, a typical plant that operates with a 24/7 concept and produces 5-7 tons of powder per hour, would be able to increase the annual yield by approximately 40-60 tons at daily operations.

Danish meat processor ROSE Poultry has found that saving water and energy is sometimes surprisingly easy. In its poultry abattoir business, the company has cut water consumption by 100 cubic metres a day on its chicken feet line, simply by reversing the water flow. A lower water temperature has also brought daily energy savings.

Chicken feet are big business. But, before the feet can be packed and exported, they are exposed to a lot of water, both to soften them so the skin can be removed and for cooling. In the past, clean water was used for every processing step and then sent to the factory’s wastewater treatment facility. Now, by pumping counter-clockwise, the water is moved from the clean cooling process to the earlier dirty processes.

The new approach cuts daily water usage on the chicken feet line by 50% and can lower the water temperature, saving EUR 100 a day

The new approach has cut daily water usage on the chicken feet line by 50%, equivalent to 7% of the factory’s overall water consumption. Furthermore, in the skin removal process, ROSE Poultry found that they could lower the water temperature from 55°C to 35°C at no expense to hygiene or product quality, cutting energy costs by EUR 100 a day.

For ROSE Poultry, their efficiency project has been a real eye-opener – and an inspiration for many other improvements, which are now underway.

Great demands are made for the quality of the climate system in livestock houses to ensure an exact adjustment of temperature, air humidity and air velocity, among other things, in order to create optimum production conditions. Birds of highly improved breeds combined with a high stocking density require a climate of precise adjustment. There is only one correct temperature – if it is not sustained, an optimum productivity cannot be attained.

In most areas, there will be times (day/night or summer/winter) when the outside temperature for a shorter or longer period will fall below the temperature comfortable for the birds. A day-old chicken requiring 33°C (91°F) – at a relative air humidity of 50% – would feel it as very cold if the outside temperature were 24°C (75°F) and the air is directed straight into the zone occupied by the birds without being heated first.

With optimum temperature and humidity, you can dramatically lift productivity

Ventilation systems to control climate conditions

Danish company SKOV supplies ventilation systems for all production types and climate conditions, and their Combi-Tunnel system takes the complexity of this issue into account. The ventilation system consists of two systems ventilating according to two different principles. The system changes between two principles based on the outside temperature and the age of the birds.

In hot weather, the Combi-Tunnel ventilates as a normal tunnel system. In cold weather, where the tunnel has its weaknesses, the Combi-Tunnel system takes the fresh air in through smaller wall inlets that are placed in sidewalls of the building. The air outlet is conducted through exhaust units in the roof or through wall fans.

 

Get a better FRC and lower mortality

Tunnel ventilation is a good principle when it is hot, but there will always be times when the principle does not work optimally at minimum ventilation. Combi-Tunnel includes the advantages of the Tunnel ventilation system during the hot seasons and at the same time, it warrants the creation of optimum ventilation during the cold season.

The experience of SKOV is that this surplus investment will be paid back in three or four years as a result of a better Feed Conversion Rate (FCR) and a lower mortality rate. The colder periods – time of the year or cold hours at night – the quicker the surplus investment will be earned back.